What do narrowboat brokers do and should you use one, either to sell or buy a boat? These questions and more are answered in a sit-down interview with James Millsop of brokerage firm Rugby Boats, based at Stowe Hill Wharf in Weedon, Northamptonshire.

This vlog picks up immediately where the last one left off, as I head from Hillmorton Wharf to Yelvertoft marina where I had the boat taken out of the water and into their shiny new boat shed for blacking.

In October last year I headed along the North Oxford canal to Hillmorton Marina where they have a little dockside crane, suitable to lift an engine out of a boat. Over the course of the next week I scrubbed out a load of muck and rust from the engine bilge, treated it with Vactan and then primed and painted it before getting the engine put back in.

When taking the narrowboat to a marina for work on the bilge and also to get the hull blacked, I noticed that the batteries didn’t seem to be holding a charge and also that the alternator was disturbingly warm. The result was that I bought a new alternator and fitted it. This is the (almost “real-time”) recording of my hamfisted work, including several things you shouldn’t do when changing an alternator.

How is a narrowboat built? That’s what this vlog aims to answer, looking at the construction process from the very first pieces of steelwork forming the baseplate, via an awful lot of welding up to a finished shell which can then be insulated and fitted out.

It’s the start of a new year and since there’ll be nothing much to watch on telly this New Year’s Day, I thought I’d throw out a few suggestions of utterly splendid YouTube channels for you to enjoy instead; these are some of the people I watch regularly and I hope you like ’em too. Happy New Year!

It really is that simple – a Happy Christmas message from me and a load of “boat-tubers”, who all assembled – much like the Avengers but with boats – at the Admiral Nelson pub in Braunston at the start of December.

Time for another fireside chat as I sit down and answer (the first tranche of) questions submitted by viewers after I recently said a Q&A was in the offing. This covers topics including bow thrusters, lift bridges and tunnel lights amongst many others.

Over the summer I noticed that in heavy rain there was a slight trickly of water coming down the stove flue. It appeared to be getting in underneath the chimney collar so I had to take it off, clean everything up, de-rust and re-seal. This video shows how I did it and how it was a bigger job than expected.

A bit of DIY and a product review in this video as I think back to when I was moored over the summer and took the cratch cover off, firstly to kill off the algae growing on it, secondly to clean it, and thirdly to re-waterproof the canvas.